Good health

Gardening ©Janet Allen
Combining exercise and healthy food production! (However, we no longer dig up the soil as we used to.)

Without good health, it's hard to live the "good life." The good news is that our "green life" is the foundation of good health—the kind of good health that cannot be found in pills.

Today's fast food, car-dominated, consumer-driven American lifestyle leads to less than optimum health. How could those temporary "pleasures" begin to compensate for the pain and ill health they cause? This isn't just our opinion. It doesn't take much research to learn that an alarming percentage of Americans' health problems are due to our affluent Western lifestyle.

Just as important, it's important to try to stay out of the health system in the first place. A pill might produce the desired result (if you're lucky), but also could have a range of unwanted effects (known or unknown). Or you could just get the unwanted effects!

Although we're grateful for the antibiotics and other modern medicines available when they're truly needed, we strive to avoid needing any of these things by maintaining our good health.

The basic parts of our healthy lifestyle are diet, exercise, a healthy, non-toxic environment, and the intangibles of a satisfying life. And here's how we're trying to age healthfully.

The basics for a healthy life

Fresh bread ©Janet Allen
John has made our whole wheat bread for decades

A big part of good health is eating healthy food. Our primarily vegetarian diet (supplemented by the fatty fishes sardines and salmon) consisting of simple recipes we cook ourselves is not only healthful, but delicious, too. And many of the ingredients are organic produce we grow ourselves or that we pick ourselves at local organic farms or buy at the farmer's market.

More information on our food and cooking is in the Food section of this website and as well as information on Food as Medicine. More information about our garden is on Our Edible Garden website.

Leaves ©Janet Allen
Even with a tennis injury, still working outside!

We try to build physical activity into our daily lives as much as possible, such as walking or biking to destinations when possible or hanging clothes on the line. But it's hard to get enough exercise that way since we have to drive to many things and we have many of the usual labor-saving (and therefore exercise-poor) devices. We supplement with intentional exercise including some strength exercises and occasional trips on the stationary bike or video exercises.

More information on walking and bicycling as transportation is in the Transportation section of this website. And we have few fossil fuel-powered devices in Our Habitat Garden.

Shampoo ©Janet Allen
Our new shampoo isn't a shampoo

We've become increasingly concerned about the toxic products that fill our home, from the materials used in the its very construction (although as an older 80+ year house, there are fewer concerns) to the everyday personal care products we use on our bodies. We're migrating to healthier products as we are able to find substitutes. Sometimes finding healthy substitutes is as easy as using just plain soap like Dr. Bronner's as shampoo instead of conventional shampoos with their long list of ingredients (some of which aren't even specified in detail). Others are harder to replace.

Singing ©Janet Allen
Free concerts!

Some of the things we're doing with household and personal care products are discussed in the "Bad Stuff" section of this website. And outside our house, we have a chemical-free yard, as described in Our Habitat Garden website.

The intangibles are the quality of life issues discussed in the rest of this "Good Life" section. And Our Habitat Garden provides truly soul-satisfying enjoyment!